Convenience Big Store: Mail ballots, and the hunt for fraud

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Here in Austin, we're just glad we'll be home on Election Day so we don't have to go through the hassle and uncertainty of voting by mail.

The where's my ballot blues

1. PAPERWORK, AND FEAR: A family of five, whose home base is Houston, has struggled for six weeks to vote by mail, a process that Texas makes especially laborious in the name of protecting against voter fraud. It looks like members of the Fette-Messier family are about halfway there.

Their son is rightfully afraid that he won't get his mail ballot in time to vote from Boston, where he attends college. It would be his second mail ballot failure in a row, after missing the 2020 elections.

25,000 votes were rejected in the March 1 primary election because of the state's most recent mail-ballot restrictions, enacted in 2021. Now you need to include both your voter ID number and your driver's license number with your request for a mail ballot. Otherwise, you'll be guessing which one the county has on file. That's not a joke. It's literally the advice elections officials are giving to mail-ballot seekers.

Pro tip: Use this Texas Secretary of State website to track your mail ballot application, or the ballot itself after you send it off.

Voting rights advocates say the Texas Legislature is making vote-by-mail hard on purpose, part of a push by red states fueled by false claims of widespread mail-ballot fraud in the 2020 election.

2. THIS IS GOOD FOR US? The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature has gone all-in on that approach, reasoning that any number of changes that make voting more difficult will also make it more secure. Any voter fraud is bad, obviously.

But AG Ken Paxton's team spent 20,000 hours looking for voter fraud, primarily in the 2020 elections, and didn't uncover anything beyond isolated incidents affecting a handful of votes in an election in which more than 11 million Texans cast ballots.

Democrats, and even some Republicans are concerned about baseless fraud claims in future elections, so they're tracking politicians who continue to deny the results of the 2020 election. But remember, summer polls have shown that 46 percent of Texans still doubt President Joe Biden's win, too.

More election coverage

Fact check: Can Texans register a dead relative to vote and then cast a mail ballot in their name? Not so fast. It's both illegal, and there are several safety measures in place to keep such a thing from happening.
Several GOP lawmakers seem to be considering reevaluating exemptions for Texas' abortion ban, but it's more likely the talk is political posturing ahead of the election rather than something they'd actually try to change.
Despite the unprecedented voter turnout in Harris County during the 2020 Presidential election, only 60% of eligible voters cast a ballot. In some parts of town, the rates were even lower. See how many voted in your neighborhood here.

3. PLAYING AT HOME: The first reader questions we've received cover some of this ground, asking first about the Republican running for Harris County Judge.

Q: Does Alexandra del Moral Mealer believe in the big steal — that Trump won the election?

A: No. She has said on the campaign trail that Trump lost the election in 2020 and, barring evidence of impropriety, she would accept the results of the election if she loses.

Q: Who are the election deniers running for office in Texas?

A: Too many to name. We knew this question would keep coming up, which is why we polled all 143 GOP candidates for Congress back in February. Thirteen of them called Biden's win legitimate.

Got a question? Post it here, and we'll chase down the answer, time and volume permitting.